Chapter 7
Freedom tasted like blood in the back of my throat.
The Severance had snapped the bond, but my body didn’t know it yet. Every nerve hummed with phantom echoes—his scent, his heat, the way his voice could command my marrow. Now it was just absence. A void that throbbed with pain where connection used to be.
The Elders dismissed the Court before dawn. Serena left in tears, Damien at her side, though his gaze never wavered from me. Even as she touched his arm, whispered his name, begged for his attention, his golden eyes followed me into the darkness like a brand.
I stumbled home alone, snow crunching under my boots, the night air sharp in my lungs. For the first time in years, no bond tugged at me, no invisible leash dragging me back. My wolf should have howled in triumph. Instead, she lay curled inside me, silent, trembling.
When I finally collapsed onto my bed, I thought the nightmares would be mine alone. But when I woke, the shadows weren’t empty.
On my windowsill, carved into the wood, was a single word: MINE.
At first, I thought I was losing my mind.
The next day, a bouquet of wolfsbane appeared on my doorstep. Not enough to kill, but enough to scorch my senses. The petals burned my palms as I shoved them into the trash, my throat tightening with rage.
By the third day, I stopped pretending it was coincidence.
The Alpha was hunting me.
I could feel him at the edges of every street, every market, every alley. The snap of a twig behind me. The brush of cedar scent lingering long after I turned my head. The weight of a gaze in the dark that wasn’t there when I looked.
Damien wasn’t bound to me anymore, but he didn’t need a bond to stalk me. He was Alpha. He owned the night.
“Clara, you’re pale,” Serena whispered when I dared to visit the pack house. She reached for my wrist, but I pulled back. Her eyes filled with guilt. “He hasn’t stopped talking about you. I think—”
“You think he still loves me?” My laugh was brittle. “Serena, he doesn’t love. He owns. He’s just furious that I slipped the leash.”
Her lips trembled. “He’ll never let you go.”
I wanted to scream at her, but the truth was too heavy. She was right.
That night, I lit every candle in my cabin, refusing to cower in the dark. But when the wind rattled the shutters, my wolf bristled.
He’s here.
The air thickened with cedar and snow. My mark, though broken, flared phantom-hot.
Then—his voice, low and velvet, slipped through the crack of the window.
“You walk freer without the bond. But do you feel free, little wolf?”
My heart slammed against my ribs. I rushed to the window, tore it open—nothing but trees and moonlight.
“Show yourself!”
A pause. A soft chuckle that raised every hair on my arms.
“If I wanted you to see me, you would. But hunting is sweeter when the prey pretends to be brave.”
The wind carried his scent, wrapping around me like chains. My wolf whimpered despite my fury.
“I’ll never be yours again,” I snarled into the night. “The law forbids it.”
Silence. Then his whisper, close enough I swore I felt it against my ear:
“Laws break. Wolves bend. And I don’t need a bond to claim you. I’ll take you in the old ways—fang and blood, hunt and capture. Run if you like, Clara. It only makes the chase sweeter.”
The candles flickered out. The cabin fell into darkness.
And in the silence, I knew—
The Severance hadn’t freed me.
It had made me his prey.
